La Belle Grecque

Mavi Boncuk |
Nicolas Lancret (1690 - 1743) The Beautiful Greek (La Belle Grecque) France c. 1732 Painting Oil on canvas

This young woman in theatrical pose was identified as The Beautiful Greek in a print by G.F. Schmidt of 1736. Schmidt also engraved a pendant of a man in Eastern dress called The Amorous Turk. Interest in the East intensified in France after the visit of Mehemet-Effendi, the Ottoman ambassador, to Paris in 1721. The Beautiful Greek may be seen as a ‘role picture’, showing a theatrical character enacting a familiar part. Such subjects had been popularised in print since the sixteenth century in France, and first appeared in painting in the work of Watteau, to whom the present picture was attributed in the Hertford House inventory of 1871. 


Lancret's subjects tended to illustration, genre and theatre pieces, and he developed outdoor scenes of children and adult games as his speaciality. From 1728 he actively promoted the engraving of his paintings. Though never as fanciful as Watteau, Lancret was the last painter of the fête galante. 


Source: Duffy, S., and Hedley, J., The Wallace Collection's Pictures : A Complete Catalogue, London: The Trustees of the Wallace Collection, 2004